Much more than a faster horse
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses — Henry Ford*
According to this Henry Ford quote, if you would have asked the average consumer what they wanted from their mode of transportation, they would have requested a faster horse, not an automobile. Even the late Steve Jobs once said:
“It’s hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
If you observe what is actually happening today in the photography space, what you see is a collection of faster horse solutions. When you look at one of the key marketing points for the latest mobile devices — the camera ranks really high up there. But why is that? Apple/Google/Samsung understand that today’s consumer greatly values meaningful experiences and the camera is the major medium for documenting these moments.
Not all moments are created equal — there’s a reason why consumers are still shelling out $2,400 for a wedding photographer and also a reason why photo aggregating apps like WedPics struggled to be viable longterm. Beyond weddings there are a lot of smaller meaningful events that would be best served with a solution that exists somewhere between hiring an expensive photographer and crowdsourcing photos from your friends or guests. Moments like birthdays, baby showers, religious events, anniversaries, etc. This is where Candidly comes in. Our data shows that the average household has 3.5 events per year that are celebrated in some fashion with an average planning time of 17 days.
Personal photography for the 21st century consumer — reasoning from first principles, we are evaluating and re-imagining the whole experience centered around the consumer. We ask ourselves: what can we deliver today that is backwards compatible for adoption while laying the foundation for future innovations — like an autonomous camera, for example. Our answer is to deliver a solution that will free up the consumer from the burden of documenting while experiencing (a distraction from experiencing fully), allowing them to be in the moment while someone or something else does the capturing. This is our mission.
Law of diminishing returns — innovation of cameras on mobile devices has reached the point of diminishing returns. Customers can barely tell the difference in camera quality across different brands and rarely use advanced fancy features that accompany these devices. We are now at the point where factory settings are sufficient for the mass market — unless you’re an instagram influencer.
Disrupting the selfie — there’s a common misconception that we are competing with other local services marketplaces like Thumbtack and Craigslist. It is simply not true. We are disrupting the camera on your mobile device.
Most meaningful life occasions are pre-planned (17 days+). We are making a bet that when photography services are convenient and affordable for these events, you will give us a try and once you have experienced what it is like to be present and not worry about taking photos — you will want us to capture the next meaningful occasion. We are leading the movement around hands-free authentic experiences. #PutYourPhoneDown #BeCandid
10 years from now, I believe the phone will not retain its current form factor and that input and output mechanisms will far outpace what we have today. In that time I hope we are there to carve out the component that is personal moment documentation, so that we can all get back to having hands free meaningful moments with the people we care about.
Much more than a faster horse — Unlike a lot of the solutions that exist today, we are not a faster horse. We don’t offer food, product, real estate or even headshot photography. Instead, we are applying modern technology to best serve humanity in meaningful life occasions so we can have it all — everyone deserves to have their best moments captured candidly.
*While there is no evidence that these exact words were used by Henry Ford, ‘history indicates that Henry Ford most certainly did think along those lines.’ Reference HBR article: https://hbr.org/2011/08/henry-ford-never-said-the-fast
